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Toronto election: Left-leaning council incumbents running again, right in flux

There is some doubt the next batch of councillors will be friendlier to Mayor Rob Ford’s agenda.

Departing councillor Mike Del Grande has created one of the three current vacancies in the upcoming election. The other two are councillors Doug Ford and Karen Stintz.
(Andrew Francis Wallace / Toronto Star file photo)

Rob Ford was asked in March how he could manage to win more council votes in a second term. He said he was sure the next crop of councillors would be friendlier to his agenda than the group that rendered him legislatively impotent even before his drug scandal.

That is possible. But all or almost all of his consistent opponents on the left and in the centre are running again. With a long six months until voting day, Oct. 27, there is considerably more uncertainty on the right.

Municipal incumbents generally have a substantial advantage over their challengers, and council turnover is usually created by retirements more than by upsets. Though anyone can beat anyone, the vacancy math suggests the progressive bloc is more likely to hold firm in 2014 than the conservative bloc.

There are 44 sitting councillors. Twenty-six have already registered to run. Seven others have signalled that they plan to run.

That group of 33 includes all but one of the people who have opposed Ford over the last two years.

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The other group — 11 who have said they won’t run, don’t yet know, haven’t said either way, or couldn’t be reached — includes nine right-leaning people who were aligned with Ford before 2013.

The three current vacancies are in Etobicoke’s Ward 2, where the mayor’s brother, Doug Ford, is not running again; Scarborough’s Ward 39, being vacated by staunch fiscal conservative Mike Del Grande; and midtown Ward 16, served by right-leaning mayoral candidate Karen Stintz.

Right-leaning Peter Milczyn, right-leaning Peter Leon, and centrist Ron Moeser, who has had health problems, have not yet decided or will not say either way.

The councillors who did not respond to requests for comment: right-leaning Mark Grimes, right-leaning Giorgio Mammoliti, right-leaning David Shiner, and right-leaning John Parker. Raymond Cho, who has mostly voted with the left but accepted a Progressive Conservative provincial nomination, could not be reached.

Some of those eight unknowns will almost certainly run: candidates can register until September. Shiner usually signs up near the deadline, Grimes later than mid-April.

It is also conceivable that councillors who lean right, like Milczyn, Parker and Leon, could be replaced by councillors who are just as conservative or more.

Still, there is no early hint of a major shift rightward. The incumbents expected to face tough challenges this year occupy all points on the ideological spectrum, but more are right-leaning than left-leaning.

They include right-leaning Cesar Palacio (Ward 17, Davenport), who will attempt for the third time to fend off Alejandra Bravo; left-leaning Paula Fletcher (Ward 30, Toronto-Danforth) and Maria Augimeri (Ward 9, York Centre), who will both face the challengers who nearly beat them last time; right-leaning Parker (Ward 26, Don Valley West) and Frank Di Giorgio (Ward 12, York South-Weston), who won last time with 31 per cent or less of the vote; centrist Ana Bailao (Ward 18, Davenport), who faces a challenge from the left; and right-leaning swing voter Gloria Lindsay Luby (Ward 4, Etobicoke Centre), who will again be tested by right-leaning former school board chair John Campbell.

A remarkable five incumbents were defeated in 2010. Only one lost in 2006.

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